(shakes fist vigorously)
Damn BBC! Get off my lawn!
When the Sony Walkman was launched, 30 years ago this week, it started a revolution in portable music. But how does it compare with its digital successors? The Magazine invited 13-year-old Scott Campbell to swap his iPod for a Walkman for a week.
And hilarity ensues.
I still have my Walkman. It was one of the last things I ever bought to be cool, since 35 years of age is the age one should stop trying to be cool anyway.
It has the following un-deniable advantages:
* It does not skip while jogging like the follow-on technology (CD players) did, and it does not require a computer to load it with music like the I-Pod does.
* It had an excellent AM-FM radio in it.
* It used standard AA batteries, not a proprietary and expensive-to-replace internal battery.
* The music was of sufficient fidelity to my war-damaged ears, and the nuances of digital music are lost on those ears anyway.
* The last good music was recorded over 30 years ago anyway.
* Mini-Cassettes were much less hassle to dub. Took longer, but then no one tried to sue your ass for doing it, either.
* I still maintain and use my mini-cassette music collection AND my Walkman.
I don’t own an I-Pod and probably won’t buy one. The exact function of it is contained within my PDA, should I want to copy much music, but I can also stream online music from my PDA when I want to.
You can take I-Tunes and shove it, I don’t need that crap no more.
The Ipod doesn’t have the fun play-backwards function like one of my Walkmans did. It was because of that function that I learned the band Chicago is really spreading Satanic messages.
Kids these day! They don’t know how good they have it! Why, in my day, we didn’t have MP3 players or Walkmen–we had to drag our stereos around on wagons, along with a generator to run the show. In the snow, uphill both ways!
🙂
I had an FM radio-only Walkman that I got as a Christmas Bonus when I was working as a photo-stripper on N-Street in DC at Harbinger. It lasted a long time but I seldom went out in the street wearing a Walkman, it made me feel weird and quite vulnerable. I like to be aware of my surroundings.